IZO

Valentina Kropivnitskaya, the wife of Oskar Rabin, died in Paris on 23 December (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

Short biography of Alik Sidorov (see IZO earlier today) (RIA Novosti, in Russian). His last project appears to have been an unusual-looking ultra-high-format camera (paralleltravel, in Russian).

Alik Sidorov, co-editor of A-Ya, the journal of unofficial art published in Paris in 1979-80s, has died in Moscow (Open Space, in Russian).

Specialist dealer in non-conformist artists Mark Kelner has a new website (M. Kelner Gallery).

A book by Ilya Kabakov on the 60s-70s underground (pavel-otdelnov).

The first Russian number of Art + Auction is out now (Open Space, in Russian); in it you will find my article on Alex Melamid's recent work.

Oleg Vassiliev at Faggionato Fine Art (Spectator) (thanks, MK).

Sensational Alexander Brener/Barbara Schurz info received from Zinovy Zinik:

Yesterday i visited a [private view for the Ilya and Emilia Kabakov exhibition at Sprovieri Gallery, London] and bumped there into my friends Alexander Brener and his partner Barbara Schurz, who after a few drinks improvised a striptease. She has a beauitiful tight arse and well-trimmed pubics (which were much more impressive than the exhibits). Brener joined her in exhibiting his private parts and then both tried to climb onto Kabakov's bed (a part of the installation), the bed collapsed and the pair preferred to depart in haste.

The Kabakovs' bed may be viewed currently at the gallery (Sprovieri). Photos © Zinovy Zinik 2008.

UPDATE: Brener (in hoody thing) - Schurz - Kabakovs' bed:

The Art Manege fair contains plenty of the usual salon-style works, but there are also galleries showing Natalia Nesterova, Tatiana Nazarenko, Maxim Kantor, Sergei Sherstyuk, Francisco Infante, Vladimir Nemukhin and Yuri Kuper. If I can make photoshop work here in Moscow, I'll post photos at some point.

Email received:

Dear Friends and Colleagues, if you are traveling to NY… You are cordially invited to From Non-Conformism to Feminisms: Russian Women Artists from the Kolodzei Art Foundation. Curated by Natalia Kolodzei. Opening Reception Tuesday, December 9, 2008, from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm.
The exhibition is from November 13, 2008 to February 7, 2009 at Chelsea Art Museum, Home of The Miotte Foundation, 556 West 22nd Street (@ 11th Ave), New York, New York 10011. Tuesday through Saturday 11 to 6, Thursday 11 to 8. + 1.212.255.0719, www.chelseaartmuseum.org

Sotheby's NY's 11 November evening sale of contemporary art, which will really test the market, includes Erik Bulatov's New York II, est. $900,000-1,200,000 (Sotheby's).

Voice of America interviews Norton Dodge (VOA News, in Russian).

Vitali Komar and novelist Gary Shteyngart to speak at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art on the University of Oklahoma campus, Friday and tomorrow respectively (Norman Transcript).

A reader writes:

I read with interest your blog this morning regarding the Philips De Pury auction. I don't know whether you noticed but a new record was also set for a Pivovarov. His Triptych with a snake sold for £145,250 (USD 250,000) ... It is also intriguing as it is a very recent work

Always glad to oblige someone trying to boost an artist's reputation ;) Yes, in this case Pivovarov does seem to have proved the exception to the observation that recent works by old-established artists didn't do so well.

At Sotheby's contemporary sale last night the good Erik Bulatov, Jumping, 1994, failed to sell; apparently no-one bid on it. I imagine there will be a post-auction approach. The sale as a whole did OK on percentage sold, but quite a lot of works went under estimate. Phillips de Pury's day and evening sales today will give a further idea of what's happening at the top end of the market.

The Boris Grois-curated Total Enlightenment will open in Madrid (Artdaily).

Reader KY asks, vis-a-vis the recent Sotheby's sale in New York (IZO, earlier):

It's very interesting that the final sale prices for the Neizvestnys (both painting and sculpture) are much less than what equivalent works are going for in his current gallery show at Mimi Ferzt in New York. Why?

I agree it's interesting. In one sense it's maybe just the difference between prices asked and prices actually paid. Of course, what Mimi Ferzt is offering may not be directly comparable to what Sotheby's sold. No matter how much the art-investment funds might like you to think so, the price of a work of art art is not directly calculable by comparison with other works: the devil's in the details. There are multiple considerations: quality, rarity, subject-matter, date, medium, provenance, even such factors as colouring (blue and red worth works are worth more than green and yellow, for example). Auctions usually insist on low estimates, dangling the carrot of a possible high price on the day, which often enough doesn't transpire. In the case of older art, or art by deceased artists, when the supply of work is finite, auction prices often seem to match or exceed gallery prices. But I think there's often little enthusiasm at auction when buyers believe that in the artist's studio or gallery there might be more similar work. Attempts to sell at auction contemporary works by Dima Gutov, Blue Noses, Oleg Kulik etc have suffered from this perception: there's no real compulsion to buy because you can always get something similar tomorrow, direct from the artist or his/her gallerist. Whether Mr Neizvestny actually has a significant backlog of work in his studio, I don't know.

Three video interviews: Boris Mikhailov talks to Ekaterina Degot (Open Space, in Russian).

Results of Sotheby's NY sale today; the Russian works performed well. It's an interesting indicator of collector bias that Ernst Neizvestny's paintings cost more than his sculpture (Sotheby's)

Aeroplane named after Timur Novikov (Moscow Times).

Last night at the National Centre for Contemporary Art Boris Mikhailov gave a two-hour Q&A session. There was standing-room-only for late-comers. Thinking about his early work Mikhailov was pre-occupied with an art-historical imponderable: to what degree was it an expression of himself, to what degree an expression of the spirit of the times? I was surprised to hear that his early super-imposed photos, which he used to exhibit as a slide-show accompanied by music, were shown in Moscow in the 70s, at Moskovski Komsomolets newspaper. He also said that the difficulties surrounding street photography today, what with the war on terror and the general public jitteriness about being made use of, are as inhibiting as the old Soviet restrictions.

On the Kabakovs in Moscow (Valentin Diaconov/Artinfo).

I get a warm fuzzy feeling when the same name pops up in different contexts and at different times. It suggests life really is a kind of soap opera a la A Dance To The Music Of Time. Alexander Goldfarb is now best known as an ally of Boris Berezovsky's and author of a book about the late Alexander Litvinenko. But, on browsing through the useful tome Komar and Melamid by Carter Ratcliff (1988) I read that it was Alexander Goldfarb who in 1976 introduced gallerist Ronald Feldman to the work of Komar and Melamid.

The image of McCain and Obama at their first debate put me in mind of a still-life by Ilya Tabenkin. Apart from the congruence of colour and composition, there's the same sense of kierkegaardian angst, a "fear of failing".

Past Imperfect, a "memoir in anecdotes" by Grisha Bruskin, came out in English translation earlier this year (Amazon).

Video report on the Kabakovs exhibition at the Garage (Open Space). Plus a look at the third installment of this grandiose show at Vinzavod (Kommersant, in Russian).

Ilya Kabakov in conversation with Ekaterina Degot (Open Space, in Russian). And a distinctly contrarian view from viketz (art4.ru, in Russian).

A video report on the Kabakov retrospective that began at the Garage last night (Telekanal Kultura, in Russian). And below his new work A Game of Tennis, opening at the Guelman Gallery tomorrow.

More Kabakov: Ekaterina Degot's video interview (Telekanal Kultura, in Russian); and the 17 September opening at Vinzavod will be streamed live on the Ministry of Culture website (Vesti, in Russian).

Preview of the Kabakovs show, opening in Moscow tonight (John Varoli/Bloomberg). And formerly Moscow- now NY-based conceptualist Irina Nakhova remembers visiting Ilya Kabakov in his Moscow studio (Vremya, in Russian).

Anatoli Brusilovsky now has a website (anatolbrusilov.com, in Russian) (thanks, ED).

While on the Hitler theme: Alexander Kosolapov's Big Mac (1983, 180 x 130 cm) is up for auction with Hampel this month (Hampel) (via Art Times, in Russian).

Komar & Melamid & Soldier's Most Unwanted Music - the ringtone (cowperthwait).

David Riff on Soviet-era works by Boris Mikhailov (Open Space, in Russian).

An interview with Ilya and Emilia Kabakov (John Varoli/The Art Newspaper):

We are careful when selling to Russians because we worry that they will turn around and resell the works. The top Russian collectors include Alexander Smuzikov. He has a lot of works, in fact, I think his is the biggest Kabakov collection in Russian hands. Delya Allakhverdova of the Contemporary City Foundation has some paintings and some drawings, from the 1980s. They both bought directly from us. Vyacheslav Kantor [billionaire and president of the Russian Jewish Congress] has quite a few pieces.

An exhibition about A-Ya, the emigre magazine through which many, including me, became acquainted witrh Russian underground art (Moscow Times).

Boris Mikhailov retrospective at Vinzavod (Milena Orlova/Kommersant, in Russian; with short slide-show).

Roman Abramovich has stepped in to plug the Kabakov show's financial gap (John Varoli/Bloomberg).

Background to Komar and Melamid's Most Wanted... (scroll down) (necessarilyunashamed).

The star Russian turns at Phillips de Pury's sales on Sunday and Monday - Semyon Faibisovich (top price £109,250), Erik Bulatov (top price £115,750), Natalia Nesterova (top price £61,250) Ivan Chuikov (£73,250) and Oleg Vasilev (top price £87,650) - held up well. The most striking result to my mind was £117,650 paid for a painting by Lev Tabenkin. A painting by Chichkan made £37,250: a sign of the expanding Ukrainian collectors' market. This said, many Russian works failed to sell, including two works each by Vulokh, Dyshlenko and AES+F, one each by Nesterova, Nazarenko, Pepperstein and Timur Novikov. (All quoted prices inc. buyer's premium).

The exhibition Total Enlightenment / Moscow Conceptual Art 1960-90, curated by Boris Grois, has opened at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (Kommersant, in Russian).

Ekaterina Degot provides comprehensive history and analysis of the show Forbidden Art at the Sakharov Museum (IZO, passim) and the subsequent prosecution of its organisers, Yuri Samodurov and Andrei Erofeev (Open Space, in Russian). She asserts:

Anyone who has been paying attention will be in no doubt that contemporary art here is merely a cover for ultra-right forces who weant to destroy the Sakharov Museum.

She deals with the question of intimidation, by the example of prosecution, of curators and museum directors; but, of course, no-one admits to actually having been intimidated. Although it's happening, for sure. For example, Elena Kovylina's film Dying Swans, a bloody piece of minimalist baroque in which a killer stalks a ballerina, shown recently at Rabouan Moussion Gallery in Paris, was commissioned originally by the Contemporary City Foundation in Moscow, whose director, when he saw the finished product, refused to show it, citing fear of reprisals.

Degot also offers a grown-up sweep at the scandal-artists such as Blue Noses, PG Group and Voina, who use sex as part of their shock tactics:

As the art historian Catherine Millet wrote in her book, The Secret Life of Catherine M, when as a young woman she couldn't think of anything intelligent to say, she usually proceeded to oral sex.

Oh, the old oral sex get-out, I'm so tired of it...

Beneath the cut: an article of mine, Shut The Duck Up, that was printed in the March 2008 issue of the journal Index on Censorship  (for some mysterious reason, Index doesn't publish its articles on the internet). It covers some of the territory as Degot; it's out of date now (Alexander Sokolov is no longer Minister of Culture, for example), but may be of interest. UPDATE: it just so happens that that particular issue of Index on Censorship (March 2008) last night won the Periodical Award at the Amnesty Media Awards (Jeremy Dear).

A few images from my recent trip to Berlin: Soviet-era mosaic, and then a couple of views of the show of Odessa non-conformism currently at the Bereznitsky Gallery. Some of the older works, such as the second image below, a painting by Yuri Leidermann, are from the collection of Odessa artist Alexander Roitburd. The show was staged to mimic an original Apt-Art (Apartment Art) exhibition.

The forgers are now well-and-truly in among the non-conformists. The work below, for example, attributed to Viktor Pivovarov, has just been withdrawn from the Macdougall sale after research showed that it was a fake. Of course, many nonconformist artists are still with us, which provides a buffer of sorts, but after they die can we expect the market to be inundated, and thus spoilt, by the fakers with their false provenances? As far as the artists who have died are concerned, the problem is already with us. Who believes all the Rukhins in circulation, for example?

Breakfast this morning with Ilya and Emilia Kabakov at their London hotel. They are here to discuss a show at Tate Modern, due next year. They have a daunting schedule of major exhibitions, beginning with the multi-venue display in Moscow in September.

The Dmitri A Prigov retrospective curated by Ekaterina Degot at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art opens tonight, I think (Artdaily).

I believe that Erik Bulatov is the only Russian artist at the big Modern and Contemporary sales in New York this month (NY Times; thanks MK).

A retrospective of work by the late poet and visual artist Dmitri Prigov opens in the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art on 12 May. The show will revolve around Prigov's text works (Lenta.ru, in Russian ). The exhibition is curated by Ekaterina Degot.

Vitali Komar was in town last night to lecture at MacDougall auction house on the Komar and Melamid work A History of the USSR: 58 small abstract paintings, each representing a year between 1917 and 1975 (when the work was made). The MacDougall estimate for their 13 June sale is £600-900,000. Before he spoke, I met Vitali and writer/broadcaster Zinovi Zinik; we both gave Zinik our views on the phenomenon of artists' groups - in my case, the short-lived Camden Town Group, whose retrospective is currently at Tate Britain, and in Vitali's, the Sotsart movement. The interview will go out on the BBC Russian service, maybe as early as tomorrow (Thursday) evening, on Zinik's West End programme.

Alex Melamid's ninety-year-old mother has negotiated for a very considerable sum the sale of a stash of his youthful paintings that she found under a bed (thanks, ZZ). I often tell my friends in the 9-5 that it's possible to switch to being an art dealer at any point. All you need is to know where to look. And the right connections, preferably umbilical.